The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 45

VniSPSniilQ HILLS Ex-disco to be razed in fire's wake Page 6 GAHDEil Make your mark with rubber stamps Page 7 SOUTH END SOUTHWEST News and features about your area of Jefferson County EDITOR: FRAN JEFFRIES PHONE: 582-4120 FAX: 582-7080 A WEEKLY SECTION OF THE COURIER-JOURNAL, A GANNETT NEWSPAPER WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1995 FAIHDALS Septic-tank trouble, sewer delay trap couple Page 3 UJ. JUL. JUL. Nrf 1 i jVi I Season's greetings Iroquois High names stadium after its first football coach 1 i I I 'V' Movements "FAITH The Archdiocese of Louisville has announced sweeping reorganization plan that would close seven Catholic churches and merge six parishes in Jefferson County. Neighborhoods is examining the history and contributions of the seven churches slated for closure.

Inside is a profile of St. Luke. Founded in 1965, the Okolona-area church is the youngest of seven parishes on the closure list. II I 1 1 Also inside, a schedule of hearings for the afjected churches. PHOTOS BY BUD KRAFT The Rev.

John D. Caskey talked with 5-year-old Ashley Surface after a Saturday Mass at St. Columba. With them were, from left, Ashley's mother, Terry; Regina House; and Ashley's brother, Matt, 10. Parishioners were stunned by the proposal to close the church.

St. Columba still vibrant, still needed, parishioners say Bv MARTHA ELSON 1 Staff Writer it t. By PAUL BALDWIN Staff Writer It has two goal posts, rows and rows of aluminum seats and a field of turf, scuffed from football cleats and falling halfbacks. The only thing Iroquois High School's football stadium lacks is a name, such as Male's Maxwell Field or Trinity's Harry Jansing Field. But Friday night, in its homecoming game against Valley High School, Iroquois will name its stadium after Dave Fryrear, the school's first head football coach.

"He had so much to do with the program," said current coach Bill Jar-boe, who played under Fryrear. "We had no field, no locker rooms He really had to start from scratch." Jarboe said he proposed the idea of naming the stadium after Fryrear after digging up a program from the stadium's 1966 dedication. Back then, George Jefferson, now a colonel in the Army and a football coach at Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, was Iroquois' offensive line coach. The fledgling football program, then in its second year, struggled against such established opponents as St. Manual and Male.

"We had a little talent deficit at first," Jefferson said, but added that "we were competitive right from the start." Jefferson, a former all-state, all-Southern and ail-American high school linebacker from Greenville, met Fryrear at Riverside in 1958 while both were assistant football coaches. Jefferson's son would later play as quarterback at Iroquois under Fryrear in 1970 and '71. "I wouldn't have wanted him to play for anybody else," Jefferson said. Joe Blankenship, a former assistant coach under Fryrear and the current offensive coordinator at Eastern Kentucky University, credits Fryrear for keeping the school's football program together. "You've got to start from rock bottom," Blankenship said.

"That's a lot more involved than just showing up on Friday nights." Fryrear, 59, a graduate of Male and the University of Louisville, was an assistant basketball coach and head track coach for Male until 1959, when he accepted a job as the head football coach at London (Ky.) High School, leading the school to a district championship in 1963. Fryrear took the position at Iroquois when the school opened in 1965. During his six-year stay at Iroquois, Fryrear coordinated the building of the school's stadium and its athletic complex while accumulating a 23-33-4 record. His two best seasons were 1967, 5-4-1, and 1968, 6-4. "We had great students," said Fryrear, now superintendent of Camp-bellsville's school system.

"They would pour everything they had into a game, way beyond what you thought they had." Fryrear gives the assistant coaches much of the credit for keeping the program aloft during its early years. "I think he had the vision to choose people who knew that football was See STADIUM Page 6, col. 2 i it 5 Caskey became pastor in 1985, Caskey said. (The Archdiocese of Louisville lists 94 families in the parish.) Parishioners now are encouraged by revitalization efforts in the West End including the proposed rehabilitation of 40 to 50 homes in Russell and plans for new housing in Shawnee's old Fontaine Ferry Park area. So Caskey and parishioners say they are stunned by the archdiocese's proposal to close the church, along with six others, under a reorganization plan announced last A hearing on St.

Columba will be held at 6 p.m. Oct. 27 at the church, 3514 W. Market St. "This is a very bad time for the Catholic Church to close in the West End," said parishioner Martha Hines, 70, of Shively, who was among eight people who attended a weekday morning Mass last week.

"There's absolutely no reason that I can see," said Bob Kilkelly, 64, of Shively, who went to school at St. Columba. "They're putting all the money in the East End," but people are "still alive down here and they need the church." But archdiocese spokeswoman See ST. COLUMBA Page 2, col. 1 When Market Street was extended from the old city limits at 34th Street to North Western Parkway in 1914, the 8-year-old St.

Columba Catholic Church experienced a growth spurt as young Portland families moved west, to the "suburbs." During the 1930s, 250 men from St. Columba once took part in the annual Corpus Christi procession at Churchill Downs, and the end of World War II was marked by a standing-room-only Thanksgiving service. By the early 1950s, St. Columba School was the largest Catholic grade school in the city, with 1,100 students, according to a church history, and the church was "one of the richest," said longtime parishioner Anna Sils, 71. But Interstate 264's extension through the Shawnee area in the early 1960s triggered the beginning of the parish's decline.

"Many longtime parishioners were uprooted from their homes and with the integration of the community, the Catholic population became smaller," the history relates. Still, the parish rebounded and Of If Jit 3 4. res-, Longtime member Mary Simpson read a prayer before a Saturday-afternoon Mass at St. Columba. church.

The parish festival was revived and bingo was started in 1977, and former parishioners returned to visit and support St. Columba. The church had been remodeled by its 75th anniversary celebration in 1981 and, although membership had fallen markedly since the 1950s, it has risen again from about 100 families to 120 since the Rev. John the second half of the 1970s is remembered as a period of growth, with black neighborhood families, who now make up about a third of the congregation, joining the Hazelwood blaze leaves shopping center's future in doubt Also wiped out in the two-story blaze were a Bank of Louisville branch, the thrift store, the Louisville South End Karate Club and two office spaces. But for others in the 50-year-old strip mall, the fire meant only a brief interruption.

Doris Whitehouse, a waitress for 30 years at Hazelwood Restaurant, two doors down from The Outlet Store, doubted that the blaze would hurt business at the tiny, 24-hour diner, which wasn't damaged. "We're seeing business as usual," she said. said Maj. Henry Ott, chief of investigations for the Louisville Fire Department. Mary Haas, the owner of the charred section in the middle of the shopping center, said she has no idea what will become of it.

(Haas' relatives own other sections of the center.) "Right now we just can't say anything," said Haas, who was at the fire scene last Wednesday with insurance investigators. "We'll try to decide something once we are through with the insurance companies. It could take awhile." The loss of the bank branch may have the biggest impact on area residents, many of whom don't drive. Bessie Moore, a resident of a nearby apartment complex, said the loss of the bank would cause problems for members of her family who banked there. "Now I guess they'll have to walk (farther) or get a ride with someone to take care of their business," she said.

Bank of Louisville vice president See BLAZE Page 3, col. 6 "The fire took care of the whole thing," said Walter Lawson, adding that they had little Lawson said he and his wife have no plans to reopen the store. "I think we will be retiring a little early," he said. The cause of the Sunday-afternoon fire is still under investigation. Arson investigators, who say the fire looks suspicious, are considering whether it was set.

The blaze, which began in a mattress and sofa at the back of the Wayside Share Care Thrift Store building, could also have been caused by a burning cigarette, By STEVE CHAPLIN Special Writer The Oct. 8 fire at Hazelwood Shopping Center gave Walter and Ollie Lawson an unwanted present an unexpected early retirement from their shop, The Outlet Store, which was heavily damaged by smoke and water. The Lawsons were at their business at 4114 Taylor Blvd. last week prying open a plywood-covered door to inspect the damage from a blaze that it took some 60 firefighters two hours to get under control. Fourth and Oak: an ugly situation no matter how you look at it probably was a natural consequence of the neighborhood's previous decline.

But Old Louisville has become reinvigorated during the past i5 years, and it has more than its share of sophisticated, politically savvy residents. So why has nothing been done? Gridlock, pure and simple. It's a classic case of A a and the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. Build it cheap, build it ugly, and then run off and count your money. It must be noted that the preservationists gave their stamp of approval to this eyesore, and one hopes that, 20 years hence, their children will not clamor to save this exquisite example of the city's Golden Age of Abysmal Architecture.

Last month Urban Development a company owned by Lenora Paradis and her partner, Scott Cummings, bought the rundown property on the northeast corner of Fourth and Oak. The purchase was trumpeted by preservationists, who touted the couple's track record in historic preservation. They plan on renovating the existing buildings and turning these sow's ears into silk purses. Frankly, it will be a miracle if they end up with polyester. Old Louisville see the need to call in the bulldozers? What's the point in preserving historic urban blight? But then you look at the northwest corner of Fourth and Oak and you begin to understand.

There it is, the typical Louisville architectural atrocity created by some graduate of Mr. Schlock's School of Strip-Mall Design. Asphalt parking lot about a block long, running from the sidewalk back to the nondescript, one-story brick building that houses a Taylor Drug Store. It has the personality of a wall-eyed pike and a ridiculous cuprous-green pyramid jutting up about midway along the roof. It's the kind of tasteless building and they're all over town where adding a pink flamingo would give it a touch of class.

This, unfortunately, is what happens too often in the name of economic development Trouble is, you look at that corner and the only historical character that comes to mind is Dr. Jack Kevorkian. You wish somebody would call his toll-free number and get him down here immediately to put those buildings out of their misery. Anything would be an improvement. A two-story contemporary crack house, an adult bookstore, a small nuclear-power plant, a landfill.

But no. The preservationists for eight years have thwarted plans to raze those buildings and put up something a bit more alluring. First a McDonald's was torpedoed; then, after years of haggling, a much-revised proposal for a Walgreens was rejected. That was what set Bather off. If the city can acknowledge at long last that places like Cottei Homes are wretched and need to be razed, why can't the folks in RICHARD DES RUISSEAUX NEIGHBORHOODS COLUMNIST Almost as often as Halley's Comet comes around, some member of the Louisville Board of Aldermen says something that makes sense.

It happened earlier this year when 12th Ward Alderman Paul Bather, during a failed attempt to emasculate the Louisville Historic Landmarks and Preservation Districts Commission, declared, "Fourth and Oak is a dump." That eloquent statement was directed specifically at the northeast corner of the Old Louisville intersection, which looks like a methadone clinic waiting to happen. Indeed, it has looked that way for at least a decade, maybe two. The buildings are so dilapidated that several of the businesses have signs on their doors that say, "Thank You for Not Sneezing." What caused the corner to go to seed in the first place is anybody's guess, but it preservationists vs. developers. The preservationists, represented by the Old Louisville Neighborhood Council, the Old Louisville Business and Professional Association and the Landmarks Commission, want to maintain the area's historical.